Check out this sentence in today’s Wall Street Journal: “But the transformation has also wiped out much of a cradle-to-grave safety net — health care, education, pensions — that ensured basic needs were met for most of the population. It has severely damaged large parts of the country’s environment, and triggered a widening gap between rich and poor.”

It’s nice to see that the Journal is worried about the declining fortunes of so many of the American people. Except the story is about China…yup, it’s a bad thing, sometimes, when development undermines people elsewhere.

You need a subscription to read the story but here’s the final paragraph, which sums up the details:

China’s leaders in the past three decades have engineered one of the most remarkable economic transformations in human history. And yet today the country faces tests borne of that progress that are in some ways trickier than those it has already overcome. A nation that started out railing against capitalism now embodies many of its most extreme elements. Like other industrializing economies, it must find ways to guide national ambitions, so they don’t ultimately undercut the national interest.

I’m sure tomorrow’s paper will look at the same phenomena here.